Plate LI. HADRIAN’S WALL: NEAR HOUSESTEADS, NORTHUMBERLAND
The treatment of the conquered land was wise and humane. Druidical religion, already a waning force, was permitted to exist, though it included human sacrifice and was hostile to the Romans. In the reign of Claudius it was forbidden. But other native deities were actually encouraged by the state, and Augustus himself built an altar to some strange Gallic spirits. But side by side with the native religion he fostered the new cult, as in Asia, of “Rome and Augustus.” There had always been tribal councils which culminated in a great national gathering at Lugdunum once a year. Apparently the presiding priests had been elected from the well-born natives and were in opposition to the Druids. Augustus made skilful use of this organisation and fostered it in order to make it a centre for Roman patriotism. He set up a great altar at Lugdunum inscribed “to Rome and Augustus.” It was constructed in a sacred grove, and was surrounded by statues emblematic of the sixty Gallic tribes. The elected priest had to be a Roman citizen of Gallic birth. It soon became a distinction coveted by the grandsons of those who had fought against Julius. This is very characteristic of the systematic empire-building which went on in the days of Augustus. Lugdunum rose to be a great imperial city, the only city in Gaul which possessed full Roman citizenship and had a mint of its own. From it a great and elaborate road system radiated to all parts of France very much in the same directions as the modern railways. Schools were founded and the study of Latin encouraged though not enforced. The Gauls took very ardently to their new studies, displaying in particular a remarkable faculty for rhetoric. The principle came into force that when a town or district could show that it spoke Latin it received important rights of citizenship, including that great privilege, the use of Roman law. The land system of Gaul differed essentially from that of Italy in that it was based on tribes and cantons instead of cities. Already the towns were growing as centres for the tribes, but to this day many of the names of French cities are those of tribes rather than towns: thus Lutetia of the Parisii is Paris, Durocortorum of the Remi is Rheims, Divodurum of the Mediomatrici is Metz, and Agedincum of the Senones is Sens. The tribute ultimately fixed was a high one but on the whole justly regulated. It is probable that the ugly story of Licinius and his extortions is told as an exceptional occurrence. In any case Gaul was taught how to grow rich and prosperous. Mines of silver and gold were successfully exploited, the culture of flax was encouraged, and the soil was found to be admirably suited to cereal crops. Gaul became a hive of industry and a source of ever-increasing wealth. She purchased oil and wine from Italy as well as the articles of Eastern luxury which passed through the hands of Roman merchants. A 2½ per cent. duty was charged at the frontier both on imports and exports. Such were some of the methods by which the Romanisation of Gaul was effected, and the foundations so well and truly laid that through all the invasions of Franks and Burgundians, Gaul remained Roman in speech and thought, and remains so to this day.[46]
Of all the momentous problems which Augustus had to face, the delimitation of the northern frontier was the weightiest. It has always been one of the disputed questions of Roman history, why Augustus, who was generally so cautious and so unwilling to embark upon adventures, deliberately chose to cross the Rhine and plunge into those impenetrable forests of whose dangers and difficulties Julius Cæsar had left so clear a warning. Was it his aim to forestall the danger of a German invasion of Gaul? On the other hand, the Rhine might well seem a sufficient frontier, as indeed for many centuries it was. Was it his aim to exercise his troops in difficult warfare and perhaps secure military renown for the young men whom he had destined for the succession? These are scarcely adequate motives for a man like Augustus. Did he hope to acquire wealth out of Germany as he had done out of Gaul? He must have known that the virgin forests and undrained morasses of Germany would scarcely balance the difficulties and dangers of a campaign there, and that the Germans were far behind their Gallic cousins in civilisation. The problem seems to me insoluble unless we accept the theory that the whole scheme was part of the search for a natural strategic frontier undertaken with false notions of geography. It is certain that many of the ancients believed that they would find the Ocean again where Russia is, and that the Caspian Sea was part of it. In that case the Romans may have hoped to round off their empire satisfactorily in this direction. It would explain the curious tactics by which Roman expeditions crossing the Rhine and plunging into the heart of Germany ordered their fleets to coast along the Dutch and Danish shores.
From whatever motives it was undertaken, this penetration of Germany and its ultimate failure was a fact of vast consequence in the history of Europe. From one point of view the history of Europe may be described as a record of the various relations between the Roman and the German elements, with occasional incursions from the Celtic or Turanian fringes. It is one long contest between Latin and Teutonic race, religion, language, law, and ideas political and economic. Hence it is impossible to overrate the importance of the moment when the first round of that age-long contest was fought out and settled. Hidden among the forests in those mysterious wildernesses beyond the Rhine were the numerous tribes who were destined one day to form the nations of Europe. Here were the Saxons of Saxony and England, the Swabians, the Franks, the Vandals, the Burgundians, the Goths, the Lombards, and many others, yet unnamed, the germs of the nations.
It was by no means their first entrance on the stage of history. We believe that the dominant races of historical Greece, and perhaps of historical Rome, traced back their ancestry to the central regions of Europe. Since then history had recorded several alarming incursions of northern barbarians, and in a general sense the story of the Mediterranean peoples shows how wave after wave of strong warriors from the North descended upon the fertile peninsulas of the South, which always absorbed and assimilated them, until finally they became a prey to the enervating influences of climate, melted into the native strain, and had to make room for a fresh wave of untamed northerners. Read in this light, extraordinary interest attaches to the moment when all-conquering Rome attempted to conquer the wilds which sheltered these mighty tribes. If she had succeeded in taming and Romanising the Germans also, as she had done with the Spaniards and Gauls, the course of history might have been very different. But even then, though she knew it not, behind the Teutonic peoples lay the Slavs, and behind them the Tartars and the Huns. The task of civilising the world from a single centre was impossible. Augustus would have been wiser to choose a strong frontier first and then proceed gradually by peaceful penetration. Probably Augustus judged that the policy of buffer states which he had applied in the East was not applicable to barbarians. As it was, conquest was the method he selected, contrary to his usual custom and contrary to his natural inclination. Herein success led to over-confidence and so to disaster.
We always term the people over the wall “barbarians,” but the Germans had their various political and social systems and some of their tribes were more civilised than others. By comparing the Commentaries of Cæsar with the Germania of Tacitus we get a fairly comprehensive notion of German institutions, which, it must be remembered, were those of our own ancestors. They had no cities. Like the Gauls they were grouped in tribes and the tribes were subdivided into cantons, the cantons into villages. They lived on the produce of their flocks and herds, on the chase, and on a primitive type of “extensive” agriculture, which involved fresh ploughlands every year and thus caused continual unrest and jostling of tribe against tribe. This was what made them such troublesome neighbours to the Gauls, and led to those gigantic “treks” which meet us from time to time in history. Their only political system was a fighting organisation; hereditary chiefs and princes led them in battle and the general in a large movement was elected from amongst the princes by the freemen of the tribe. In peace there was no general magistracy, but the elders and priests administered justice in the villages. Among the warriors there was a rough freedom and equality. The free warrior had very considerable rights, but only as a warrior. Among the Suevi, according to Cæsar, there were a hundred cantons, each of which furnished a thousand men to the army for a year’s service while the rest stayed at home to carry on agriculture and hunting. But this seems, if it is accurate, to be an exceptional degree of organisation. The chastity, the patriotism, the honesty of these barbarians as well as their courage and gigantic stature were favourite themes for Roman eloquence. It is likely enough that Tacitus heightened their virtues with his satirical instinct in order to point a moral to his fellow-countrymen.
